Difference Between Quality and Quantity

Quality and quantity are two concepts that have great significance in our lives and ultimately decide the course of our lives. Even if you love a sport, you get tired watching a game everyday on TV. People are seen debating in favor of either quality or quantity. A person is judged by the quality of the company he keeps, but nowadays it is common to judge sociability of a person with the number of contacts he has on social networking sites. There are companies that believe in mass production without being bothered with the quality of their product but at the same time there are companies that believe in quality at all costs and never try to produce in bulk. So this debate between quantity and quality is never ending and there seems to be no conclusion as to what is better, quantity, or quality.

What do you do when you have a choice of two fruit vendors, one having lots of quantity of fruits and the other one having limited quantity but better quality fruits. Of course you get attracted to one who has more fruits first. But no sooner do you have a look at the quality of his fruits do you turn your attention towards the other vendor who has better quality of fruits. The same principle applies to all our endeavors, and in all walks of life, whether we talk about number of contacts on a social networking sites or a company that bombards us with newsletters. Do you not delete the newsletters when you find that they are annoying and have no meaningful content? Do you not look forward to the newsletters of a company that provide you with lots of information and meaningful content? If yes, then you probably know which way to turn to, quantity, or quality.

There are some who feel that quantity is important to get to quality. They say that if you have a higher number of contacts, you obviously have a better chance to find high quality people than a person having limited contacts. There is also a view that people keep on changing all their lives, and so do their goals. An acquaintance that was not important earlier may suddenly become important to you. This implies that it is better to have a higher number of contacts than focusing on quality all the time. What when you are looking for a new job? This is when quantity is obviously of great importance.

For a company, it is a dilemma that it grapples with all the time. It is always desirous to have quality than quantity. But the company also knows that people look for quantity as well as quality which is why it is important for a company to maintain both quantity as well as quality.

• Quality is desirous as people want quality in the products they use, the people they company with, and the services they make use of.

• However, there are circumstances when quantity becomes more significant than quality. Everyone knows that some products are low in quality, but they make them in quantity and flush the market with their products, and people too seem to enjoy having so many choices.

• For a blogger, quality of posts is important but he also needs to remain in the memory of the readers which is why he needs maintaining the quantity of posts as well

Comments

The need for quantity is limited to very few products or output and the need for quality not being high opens the door to other costs associated with poor quality; i.e. reputation, legal insecurities, market sales. I would say quality is a better standard than quantity, although I can concede that in order to reduce the overall costs of producing a product or output that is close to 100% quality needs to have a sufficient quantity to be financially acceptable.